VMware vCloud Networking and Security

Table of contents

The VMware vCloud Networking and Security Collector, introduced in HPE Consumption Analytics Portal 3.3, is a native collector that retrieves data from vCloud Networking and Security Manager using its REST API.

VMware renamed its vShield product suite to vCloud Networking and Security. However, as late as at least version 5.5.0a the user interface and documentation still use the vShield name. For example, you might log in using a window titled vShield Manager.

Overview

The vCloud Networking and Security Collector collects configuration data about Edge Gateways (also known as Edge instances or Edges), creating resources from an Edge's subcomponents such as the number of network interfaces and firewall rules. You can collect data about all Edges or only specific ones, and can limit collection of most resource types to only those instances that are active in some way. For more information, see Mapping data to Cloud Cruiser. The vCloud Networking and Security Manager does not provide historical data, so the collector cannot collect for a date in the past. Every time you run the collector it retrieves real-time data, writing the current server date and time as the usage end date and time in the CC Records it creates.

The collector receives data from vCloud Networking and Security as XML documents, so mapping this data to identifiers and resources in HPE Consumption Analytics Portal is done with XPath expressions. For more information, see Mapping data to Cloud Cruiser.

In this release, the vCloud Networking and Security Collector is compatible with version 3.0 of the vCloud Networking and Security REST API, which first appeared with version 5.1 of vCloud Networking and Security. For more information about this API, see the vShield API Programming Guide.

To set up regular collection and loading of data

Save the sample jobs vcloud-networking-and-security-sample-collect and vcloud-networking-and-security-sample-load as production jobs.

If you want to collect a different set of identifiers than those listed in Identifiers, modify the feed configuration as explained in Data mapping.

Import the resources in <install_dir>/resource_groups/vcloud_networking_and_security.csv. These are the resources whose usage you'll collect from vCloud Networking and Security. For information about importing resources, see Importing and exporting resources. If you want to collect a different set of resources, modify the feed configuration and create the appropriate new resources as explained in Creating resources.

Reconcile your account structure with the format of the account IDs produced by the load job. If they are different, you can reconcile them by changing the transform step of the job to produce different account IDs, by changing your account structure to match the IDs produced by the job, or a combination of both. The job produces account IDs based on a three-level account structure: Datacenter Name (12), Tenant ID (36), and Edge ID (8).

Edit your collection job to set the time zone for the usage data to the time zone of your {{vshield}} Manager computer. Use the usageTimeZone property as described in Time zones.

Schedule your collection job to run daily with a select date of Current Day. Schedule the load job to run half an hour later. Because the data you collect is a real-time snapshot, choose a time of day that best represents the state of your environment for a given day. For more information about scheduling jobs, see Scheduling a job.

Sample jobs

The following sample job files are available in the <install_dir>/job_samples directory:

vcloud-networking-and-security-sample-collect.xml: Queries the vCloud Networking and Security API for configuration data about edge gateways and writes it to CC Record files.

vcloud-networking-and-security-sample-load.xml: Aggregates and transforms this data, then loads charges into the HPE Consumption Analytics Portal database. This job also creates or updates a customer record at all levels of the account structure for each account ID in the dataset.

Bean reference

This section lists the beans you need to write batch jobs that collect and process data from vCloud Networking and Security and provides pointers to their reference information.